epiciniumarts

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an imagined scene from Three Hopes bc i picked it up again recently

if i had the strength i’d do a much longer comic of this conversation. claude isn’t meant to be a bad guy here - i imagined him coming to speak with linhardt, ready to sweet talk him with promises of scholarly research in exchange for staying with the alliance. while linhardt, in his usual blunt way, is like “i know i’m not gonna be allowed back to the empire, so let’s cut to the chase. i’d like to stay alive and also not in prison.”

and i imagined claude’s reaction being, “oh. okay. great, someone i don’t have to play a million games of 3d chess with.”

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Excited to share my piece for the @ferdibertauzine, where a visiting prince sneaks away to meet a princess's right-hand man ;)

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yuridetta commission 💜💜

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🍃🤍

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More Text Post Memes: Claude Edition 🏹♟🦌💛

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my lover for the summer

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warm up ft. the emperor

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Of ruin

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actors AU ferdithea as hannah & jacob from crazy, stupid love (2011)

※ please do not repost my art ※   ➜ commission and ko-fi links in bio

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goodbye true north, my blue zenith i will never find my way home

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YOU LIEK FIRE EMBLEMMMMMm!??????!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?

Yessssssssss.

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maybe i've become like him

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💙

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couldn’t see the forest for the trees

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So, several long long long months ago, I promised a certain fanfic author to bind their fic when they finished it. Now, it's a hefty fic and I've never done book binding before, so it's a little daunting. And with the fic being split with a time-skip, I decided it might be more feasible to put it into two books. Life is hectic and busy but I wanted to share what I have to build this magnificent book, Somewhere, Sometime by IGOM.

I don't like gutting real books for any sort of reason but this needed a hard cover. I thought I'd just go to Walmart and get one of those nice leather looking journals. Simple, but sleek. I could design a jacket to make it fancier. But! I found this.

You can slightly see the texture on this thing. It's so shiny and lovely. And it was just there in my local coffee shop. The pages have this slight pattern that I know won't translate once I print out the fic, but I thought I'd bind it then use some spray paint or something to get something like this. Will have to test before placing in book, of course.

Then the front and back have these nice, solid brown pages and I do love the elastic to keep it together, as well as the ribbon. Those stay. Pretty sure I have to gut them but they will be returned in the finished product. There is also a little envelope, folder piece but I don't know how attached to that part I am.

And for those curious, the little blurb on the back.

I followed the barcode by accident but it brought me to the company that made this and lemme tell you, if this works out, I will be spoiled for options for the second part.

Depending on how the second part goes, I'm thinking either the Wildflower Song, Layla, or Iron Horse. I want the designs to be similar but not identical. (Also, if anyone wanted them, here.)

This is what I've got so far as the current title page. I think it looks decent.

Looking again, this journal does only have 144 pages and my current document for the formatting has the fic at 762 pages. I may need to put it into multiple different books. Maybe this one is just the Jeralt in Almyra arc.

...Yes, I think that would be fun. We'll see how this goes.

Does it look better with the "Part 1" under or over the author name?

And finally, at the moment what the pages look like.

The pink line will have to be changed but I haven't yet figured out what I pushed to make it pink.

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he's a little evil, just a lil

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Reading about the Japanese text of the game giving Claude a few lines talking about how he was an angry kid is sending me in circles. Like, of course he was, ostracize and bully a kid he might turn out angry. Very humanizing. It also tells us that Claude is at odds with himself.

Fight or flight, right? The common two responses to stress, avoid a problem or run into it. Claude is neat because he learned to avoid, to be indirect, to fight smarter and not harder, when he was young. However, Claude has an inner desire to fight, you do not even need to know about his past as a kid to figure this out. Claude chose to come to Fódlan, on his own, the moment he learned he had a crest and was invited to be his grandfather's heir! Claude saw that Fódlan had the same problems as Almyra, that xenophobia was everywhere, and he chose to stay! Edelgard started a continental war and Claude did not run away! Claude has a fight response, a desire to rise to challenges when they present themselves to him. Which is at odds when we first meet Claude, that he ran away for a better position when the group got ambushed by bandits. Claude takes pride in being the 'embodiement of mistrust.' Claude thinks that being evasive is the smart thing, it is what helped him survive this long, but being forward is the right thing, it is why he is in the story to begin with. Claude is flexible in his methods, but is inflexible in his principles.

Claude is a person with two distinct halves, in more ways than one! Fitting for a kid born of two nations that are at odds, Claude has his desire to stand his ground be at odds with his wisdom telling him to approach problems indirectly and to manuever around them. Just as Claude mends two nations in Verdant Wind, so does Claude mend his two halves. Claude pushes his own agenda, he does not sit on the sidelines in indecision like in the other routes, but in his own way. Claude makes Byleth into the figurehead, but he plans the strategic maneuvers. Claude has a bombastic duel with Nader, but the whole thing is a subtle piece of theater to teach the Leicester and Almyran soldiers present to respect the prowess of both nations (remember that only Nader knows Claude is of mixed heritage in that scene, to everyone else he represents the Alliance). The supports with Marianne! Claude is so direct with Marianne in those supports, you can see a lot of the angry and impatient kid who just wants to get to the center of the problem, but the resolution is Claude opening up about his own past, but in the form of a story that is very indirect and gives him plausible deniability. How Claude's final gambit against Nemesis is a bold one, putting himself in harm's way in order to distract the crusty bastard from his arrow.

Claude's greatest weakness is that he constantly has two voices going in circles in his head, he is as ponderous and indecisive as the very Alliance he leads at times, but that scope of perspective allows Claude to approach problems in a unique and genuinely brilliant manner. Fight or flight is a false dichotomy, just like the world telling Claude that he is Fódlan or Almyran, Claude will find a way to choose both.